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X.Org Server Development Process Is Questioned

02-24-2013, 02:10 PM

Phoronix: X.Org Server Development Process Is Questioned

For the past few years the X.Org Server has managed to get back on track for being released bi-annually and without too many delays. However, the server has also fallen into a habit where it's being released without all of the "blocker bugs" being cleared...

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Well ... Keith ... X is his pet project and he perfectly fits the role of the dictator which does not care a lot.
a good example is the x rendering extension - it is fundamentally broken, and it was pretty soon obvious it was a stupid design.
but he did not even care, let users and driver developers suffer with the misconceptions he did back in 2000

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i think duct taping a broken protocol is the problem. if they fixed it twenty years ago when NeWs came out, everything would have been fine. and don't tell me about the nostalgia bull malarkey that it was advanced for its time and has served well. anyone who has read the Unix Hater's Handbooks knows that it was broken even back then. The biggest X11 haters are probably the veteran devs that worked on it. Saying that X11 is a beautiful thing is like saying that monolithic kernels are great because Linux runs supercomputers and has "served well".
The sad part is that all those dev hours wasted on duct tape are now down the drain, because Wayland is gonna replace things anyway.

"Well ... Keith ... X is his pet project and he perfectly fits the role of the dictator which does not care a lot."

The problem is deeper than that. Software development costs money. The big corps are not interested in making Linux into a great desktop. They are interested in running clustered LAMP servers in a cooled datacenter. It's not an accident that the audio and graphics stacks blow baby chucks on Linux and BSDs. I don't need a f***** low latency audio mixer on a facebook server. Our only hope is that a benevolent freetard like shuttleworth would pay these things out of this personal checkbook. So far it seems that he wants to take the billions to his grave.

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Well ... Keith ... X is his pet project and he perfectly fits the role of the dictator which does not care a lot.
a good example is the x rendering extension - it is fundamentally broken, and it was pretty soon obvious it was a stupid design.
but he did not even care, let users and driver developers suffer with the misconceptions he did back in 2000

They cant fix X Render because of Backwards compatibility. Thats why its extension after extension after extension. Xorg's unofficial stance is: If it gets broken accidentally, EVENTUALLY someone will notice (typically about a year or more later), they'll check to see if any bug reports have been filed against it. If there have been bug reports, the breakage will be fixed. If there's no bug reprots then it will be assumed that nothing uses it, and the functionality will be removed.

BUT, they will NOT purposefully break something for the simple idea of getting rid of it down the line. Thats a no-no.

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They cant fix X Render because of Backwards compatibility. Thats why its extension after extension after extension.

Xrender has a completly broken notation of geometry. Someone back than introduced those crappy trapezoids with extremly strict properties and as it turned out at least until programmable hardware arrived no GPU was able to handle that stuff at all.
Even now there are not many drivers doing work to make it fast, as its a horribly large task to get it fast & correct.

I still remember the presentations where those guys were so proud of having a rendering model which maps so well on GPU's 3D engines. Every driver programmer you talk to absolutly HATES x render, as it was designed by a few hobbyists with good intentions but no clue.
And because traepzoids are so great they depend on it for everything except axis aligned rectangles. yeah!

Regarding x render extending the protocol would have been possible with new versions to overcome this issue, but once those guys had they sh*t in Xorg they gave a damn to improve it further.

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And that we can finally get things like XWayland and running X.org Server on Linux without superuser privileges.

XWayland is entirely down to the Wayland developers (including me) failing to fully complete the window manager split and get a final protocol merged. The root problem is down to the lack of revoke() support in the kernel, unless you like everyone being able to snoop all your passwords.

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XWayland is entirely down to the Wayland developers (including me) failing to fully complete the window manager split and get a final protocol merged. The root problem is down to the lack of revoke() support in the kernel, unless you like everyone being able to snoop all your passwords.

Story however was from 2006--7years ago. So is there actually any pressure being placed upon the kernel devs (or you / Wayland devs) to get INTO the kernel is or is it the type of thing where everyones just kind of like "Well yeah we need it...but its not at the top of our priority list right now."

Note: not calling you out specifically, Daniel, I saw the linux.conf.au video a few times so I know your own project list is quite a few items long cuz of Xorg / Wayland / Weston stuff, I just mean the Wayland devs as a whole.